Braunschweig verwirrung, teil zwei

Had a few suggestions on my previous 'Brunswick bewilderment' post ranging from Hinchcliffe to Scruby so I thought I'd add a comparison pic.

I'm fairly sure the guys on the left are original HH (except the one with the missing bayonet, which is quite small and might be a homecast copy?), on the right are some Scruby's. So the mystery figures in the middle are a little bigger than HH and quite a bit bigger than Scruby.I'm leaning towards original Hinchcliffe before Peter Gilder started producing his big, chunky 25mm range.

Brunswick bewilderment

I bought these guys as 'Brunswick Avante Garde' on ebay, clearly not Hinton Hunt, maybe Minifigs S range? Any info gratefully received. On temporary bases at the moment pending any re-touching/re-painting.

And the officer looks more like a later Minifigs 25mm casting. So much taller than the other ranks, I guess I can justify this by the fact that the officer corps would have been better fed than the peasants recruited from the forests and mountains for the Jaeger corps. They are painted in a quite dark neutral grey/green so I guess they could qualify equally as Waterloo period  Avante Garde Jaegers (both types) as well as Peninsular period Oels Jaegers.

I always thought the Black Brunswickers' early history would make an interesting wargame campaign. A fighting retreat across northern Germany to the mouth of the Weser where they were embarked by the Royal Navy before entering British service. Shame about their subsequent poor reputation in the Peninsular (famous for rate of desertion, probably due to the fact that replacements came from German/other PoWs and better quality recruits went to the KGL). But they seem to have redeemed themselves in the 100 days.

Still learning how to do this blogging thing and no progress on the wargaming front in the last couple of days, so as it's 'speak like a pirate day' I thought I'd share a little pirate-related joke.

Q Why did the parrot sat on the pirate's shoulder say 'pieces of seven' ?
A It was a parroty error.

Sorry! As a professional IT nerd I find this funny, feel free to disagree and reply with better jokes.

Back in the mid 60s I was an avid builder of Airfix plastic kits. One Christmas I was given a Roman Bireme ship model (Revell / Heller?) along with a box of Airfix Romans, which I was captivated by, but had no idea what to do with. So I went to the local library and took out 'Tackle Model Soldiers This Way' by Donald F Featherstone. I was immediately hooked. Through the late 60s / early 70s I mainly collected Airfix plastics (2s/3d a box for 40 - 50 figures as opposed to 1s/3d for a Hinton Hunt infantry figure, on 2s/6d a week pocket money it was a no-brainer). Then came University, marriage, mortgage and career,so wargaming faded into the distant background. Now at an age when  retirement is looming I've decided it's time to scratch that itch again. I have a reasonable number of vintage 20mm Napoleonics from various manufacturers mostly gleaned from ebay over the last 2 years, the original idea was to strip and repaint but for now I'm just re-basing so I can field a couple of armies and start gaming in a reasonable timescale. If it's painted and looks OK from 2 feet away then it will do for now!

First post!